


Prompt: Anniversary

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [67]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6690442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda remembers the day their parents died. </p><p>Not the event; it all happened to quickly for her, mere moments before the shell took their parents and Pietro had bundled her under the bed, tucked her to him and kept them safe from the falling rubble. (Wanda thinks, sometimes, that his reflexes then were evidence of the speed he would have, just as the wisping scarlet had foretold her powers.)</p><p>The day though, Wanda remembers the day, where and how it fell on her counted out calendar of 1-365, on the Gregorian and the Julian and the cycles of the moon and seasons. Its place is marked as indelibly in her mind as the memory is in Pietro’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt: Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on my tumblr, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/143565306520/promt-anniversary-of-the-maximoffs-parents-dying).

**i.**  
The twins are used to living day by day by day. They had as children, after the shell had destroyed their home and killed their parents; counted out hours into days and then measured each day they lived on after they had been pulled from the rubble as Novi Grad fell to chaos about them. They had through the worst of the fosters, had when they had spent a summer travelling between the farms and villages in the valley below Novi Grad, had after Wanda had fought men who believed themselves entitled to her and the first wisps of scarlet had come out of her fingers, spilled a lantern, set a barn alight.

They had on the streets of Novi Grad, had in the bowels of the castle, had when allied to Ultron and then the Avengers.

Day by day by day.

(There are still days which weight more heavily on their shoulders.)

 

* * *

 

**ii.**  
It is Wanda who counts the days, more often than not. Pietro knows them, checks newspapers or calendars, pickpockets a phone to check the date and then return it in the guise of something lost found, but lets time pass him by like waves on a beach, repeating and constant and barely noticed for all the change it can slowly wreak.

Wanda counts them, each three hundred and sixty five (and that little quarter adding up to one more day every fourth year). She knows when it is their birthday, when it is this celebration or that festival, checks the moon to know when Passover will fall even when they no longer observe the faith they were raised in.

In the grand cathedral of her mind, built over the ever-more hidden synagogue foundations, the crypts are marked not with memoriae but tallies, counting how long has passed before the abacus-altar can be tilted to one side, and the count started over.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
Wanda remembers the day their parents died. 

Not the event; it all happened to quickly for her, mere moments before the shell took their parents and Pietro had bundled her under the bed, tucked her to him and kept them safe from the falling rubble. (Wanda thinks, sometimes, that his reflexes then were evidence of the speed he would have, just as the wisping scarlet had foretold her powers.)

The day though, Wanda remembers the day, where and how it fell on her counted out calendar of 1-365, on the Gregorian and the Julian and the cycles of the moon and seasons. Its place is marked as indelibly in her mind as the memory is in Pietro’s.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
It has always been this way, Pietro thinks when he finds Wanda lost in thought and teartracks on her face. She’s not entirely there he knows, and sits beside her, tugs her to him and wraps her in an embrace until she is. Wanda tucks against his side, tucks her face to his chest and Pietro simply sighs.

Whatever the reason for Wanda’s tears - some nightmare, guilt for Novi Grad, some remembered loss, whatever it may be - he will be there.

“Today,” Wanda says eventually, and it is a murmur, barley even a whisper. “Our parents died today.”

Pietro’s sigh is much deeper, much longer, as he tucks Wanda close against him, and hides his own tears in her hair.

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
_I miss them_  is something neither of them whisper any more. They know it to be true, just as they know how much they care for each other, just as they know with such precision how their powers work. They don’t need to express how they grieve their parents, to this very day, because some things, for them, are simply known.

In the past this day has been one of rage, of swearing vengeance all over again, of sabotaging the cars of the corrupt police, of protesting twice as fiercely as they ever had. Sometimes it has been days of peace, of remembrance, of going to the graveyard where their parents were buried and leaving a pebble at each grave.

Other days, a very few days, have been this, of weeping and comfort as they remember the childhood they might have had.

Not perfect, surely, not stable with the war in Sokovia, but a _childhood_  all the same, and not one which cut off as they turned ten.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
When they have each cried themselves out Pietro’s fingers are so tangled in Wanda’s hair she has to untangle them herself. It is a calming thing for her, Pietro knows, and asks her then what he might not otherwise.

“What brought this on?”

Wanda knows he does not mean the grief, does not mean the remembrance. That has always happened this day, regardless.

He means the tears, which have not happened since they were sixteen.

Wanda leans her head against his shoulder, focusses on untangling her hair where it is wrapped around her brother’s fingers. 

“The Avengers,” she says. “We have a place now. Security. Safety, money. It reminded me, of-”

“Of what our childhood could have been.”

Wanda nods, unloops the last knotted piece of hair from around his fingers and starts to comb it out herself.

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
The next year Pietro counts out the days, finds the date.

The next year they go, hand in hand, to the graveyard where their parents rest, and leave paired pebbles at their graves.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this please leave a comment!


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